Posted on 06/24/2009 8:04:24 AM PDT by metmom
Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms.
"If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.''
Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.guelphmercury.com ...
Important bump!
You were saying — Now, people are dropping like flies and by the amount of coverage it’s getting, you’d never know there was a virus that deadly and unpredictable going around.
—
This was a while back that you said this, but I was doing some reading up on the H1N1 virus, and came across this thread. Your phrase “dropping like flies” is the exact same phrase that my grandmother used when describing the 1918 flu to me when I was a kid.
She said that they were dropping like flies in the street. I thought she was using colorful language at the time, and I perceived that phrase as an exaggeration, but I now find out that they were, indeed, dropping like flies in the street, where people would have no symptoms at the beginning of the day and when going home after work, there would be people “dropping like flies” right in the street and dead, on the spot.
There were body carts sent around to pick up dead people (in the street) apparently. My grandmother said that all her neighbors had dead kids but our family didn’t have anyone who died. So, we were fortunate.
I hope I’ve got some natural resistance in the “genes”... :-)
Star Traveler if you find any swine flu articles post them to this thread please .
Need For Accurate Estimates Of The Severity Of The New H1N1 Virus
Main Category: Swine Flu
Also Included In: Public Health
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/157669.php
A paper published on bmj.com reports that there is a need for precise estimates of the severity of the new H1N1 virus. Experts need to assess in particular how many deaths might arise over the course of the pandemic. This will be the focus of healthcare planning over the upcoming months.
Those forecasts will be helpful in deciding whether to put into practice social distancing measures, such as school closures.
Initially, information suggests that this new Influenza A (H1N1) virus is relatively mild. The case fatality ratios which are the total number of deaths due to the disease divided by the total number of cases are around 0.5 percent. This is comparable to the upper range of that seen for seasonal influenza, and it shows relatively low hospitalization rates.
On the other hand, severity appears to fluctuate considerably among countries. Fatal cases have been much younger than for seasonal influenza.
Researchers at the Imperial College London studied the complexity of assessing the severity of the new virus. They indicate that in most infectious diseases there is a risk of predisposition that leads towards diagnosis of more severe and hospitalized cases. This results in overestimation of the case fatality ratio.
However, some deaths caused by flu might not be recognized as such. Flu infections can momentarily amplify the risk of vascular death, such as heart attacks and strokes. As a result, there can be an underestimation of the case fatality ratio.
The time delay between disease onset and death is another main cause of bias. The authors explain this can lead to an underestimate of the case fatality ratio, especially in the early phase of an epidemic.
The authors mention: “In order to get a clear picture of the severity of the H1N1 virus, it is vital to take these and other factors into account.” They recommend study designs and statistical analysis methods to develop our capability in obtaining reliable case fatality ratios.
They say in closing that this is crucial and that they will guarantee that any changes in the virulence of the virus are rapidly detected so that mitigation policies are applied correctly.
Dr Tini Garske, lead author of the study from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Outbreak Analysis & Modelling at Imperial College London, wrote: “Accurately predicting the severity of this swine flu pandemic is a very tricky business, and our research shows that this can only be achieved if data is collected according to well designed study protocols and analyzed in a more sophisticated way than is frequently being performed at present.”
“If we fail to get an accurate prediction of severity, we will not be providing healthcare planners, doctors and nurses, with the information that they need to ensure they are best prepared to fight the pandemic as we head into the flu season this autumn.”
H1N1 isn’t an obvious diagnosis
By Rick Ruggles
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
http://www.omaha.com/article/20090716/NEWS01/707169944
For all the attention it has received, H1N1 flu isn’t an obvious diagnosis when a patient arrives at the hospital with chronic heart and lung problems, flu experts in Omaha said Wednesday.
Even if the virus is diagnosed promptly, the window of opportunity to treat a patient with anti-viral medicine is narrow — generally a mere 48 hours from the onset of symptoms — if the medicine is to work well.
Nevertheless, the experts said, physicians and other medical providers must be alert to the possibility that it’s H1N1 flu that has sickened a feverish patient with a cough or sore throat.
The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday reported the state’s first H1N1 flu death since that strain began traveling around the globe in the spring.
Based on death notices and other information, The World-Herald learned that the victim was Deb Smith, 56, of Broken Bow. Smith, who worked during the day at a Broken Bow bank and in the evening as a bartender at the Broken Bow Country Club, died Saturday. Her funeral is today.
Dr. Joann Schaefer, the state’s chief medical officer, said the Custer County woman, whom Schaefer and other authorities declined to name, had heart disease and chronic lung disease. Schaefer said H1N1 worsened her underlying medical conditions.
State health officials said the lab confirmation of H1N1 came after the woman’s death.
Dr. Tom Safranek, the state’s epidemiologist, said the patient was first in the Broken Bow hospital, then taken to a Lincoln hospital and moved to a second Lincoln hospital.
Steve Osborn, the infection control practitioner at Broken Bow’s only hospital, referred questions to the State Health Department.
The victim is only the second patient from Custer County, in the middle of Nebraska, with a confirmed case of H1N1. There are 264 confirmed cases statewide. Iowa, which has reported no deaths, has 155 confirmed cases.
In a community with almost no cases of H1N1, a physician wouldn’t necessarily immediately think of it as the cause of a patient’s distress, especially if heart and lung problems had flared up, said Dr. Phil Smith, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Most hospitals have a rapid flu test that promptly indicates whether a person has the flu. H1N1 confirmation is provided within hours or the next day by the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory at UNMC.
After the window to treat with anti-virals has closed, a physician must treat the patient in serious distress with oxygen, antibiotics and other therapies.
Dr. Robert Penn, Methodist Hospital’s medical director of epidemiology, said his hospital has emphasized to its doctors that testing and treatment for H1N1 should be done on any patient with a fever of 100 or higher and a cough or sore throat.
The Nebraska death “should bring to everyone’s attention that you should still consider H1N1,” Penn said.
Dr. Kari Simonsen, medical adviser to the Douglas County Health Department, said people who are quite ill with flu symptoms should see a doctor quickly.
But there is no guarantee that anti-viral medicine promptly administered would help a person who is sick and has serious underlying conditions, said Dr. Marvin Bittner, associate professor of medicine at Creighton University.
Clinical tests of such medicine tend to be done on people without such serious conditions, Bittner said.
One death is tragic, he said, but society neglects many tragedies to come by not emphasizing the importance of treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other health problems that many Americans face. There are, he said, “hundreds and hundreds of opportunities for prevention.”
Meanwhile, more than 150 state and local health officials, along with representatives from education and other fields, gathered Wednesday in Lincoln to plan for the possibility of larger H1N1 outbreaks this fall and winter. Federal and state officials plan to offer the vaccine this fall.
Schaefer said the goal is to reduce the number and severity of cases by limiting chances for the virus to spread. Staying home if sick and sending sick children home from school or day care can help diminish the effect of a disease outbreak, she said.
“Our motto is plan for the worst, hope for the best and see what Mother Nature tosses us,” she said.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2538597/Cherie-Blair-fights-swine-flu.html
CHERIE Blair has caught suspected swine flu, The Sun can reveal.
The former PM’s wife has been forced to cancel a string of public engagements as she battles the flu.
Mrs Blair started feeling unwell at the start of the week and is believed to have been diagnosed with suspected swine flu on Tuesday.
Doctors gave her a course of Tamiflu and she is now resting as she fights the virus.
She has cancelled her diary engagements including receiving an honorary degree from Liverpool’s Hope University today.
A staff barbeque has also been dropped to ensure she doesn’t pass on the virus.
Ex Premier Tony Blair has NOT picked up the bug, and the family’s children are also unaffected.
Mrs Blair is expected to recover fully by Monday next week and will no longer be contagious, it is thought.
Mr Blair’s office has refused to comment.
Mrs Blair is the most high profile person in Britain to catch swine flu to date.
Thousands are expected to go down with the virus in August and a second bout is expected to hit Britain in the autumn.
Study finds pig role in 1918 pandemic’s evolution
By Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press
Posted: 07/15/2009 04:17:19 PM PDT
WASHINGTON - History’s deadliest flu pandemic in 1918, may not have made a sudden jump from birds to people after all.
New research says the pig played a big role as an influenza mixing bowl - a gene probe with lessons for tracking today’s swine flu outbreak.
The genetic ancestor hunt shows pieces of the 1918 killer virus were quietly circulating in people and pigs up to 15 years before the pandemic erupted, researchers reported Monday.
That argues for better surveillance of percolating flu strains, not just in the long term but right now. Scientists worry that the current influenza pandemic - the never-before-seen swine flu strain now crossing the globe - could become worse as it runs into other types of flu.
“We need to be vigilant for any genetic mixing of strains currently circulating in humans,” lead researcher Dr. Gavin J. D. Smith of the University of Hong Kong said in an e-mail interview.
Catch two different flu viruses at once and a new one can emerge, something scientists call reassortment. Birds are the ultimate origin of influenza viruses, but because pigs can catch both bird and human flu strains, they’ve long been recognized as a species mixing vessel. The study, in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the first evidence that the 1918 pandemic - like the two that followed it, in 1957 and 1968 - evolved from a series of those reassortments, not a sudden jump.
The new swine flu - a part-pig, part-human, part-bird virus that’s in the same influenza family, called H1N1 - also evolved gradually.
“The one thing that we do know about this 2009 H1N1 is that it likes to mate,” said study co-author Dr. Robert Webster, a well-known influenza specialist from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
His biggest fear isn’t that the novel swine flu will mix with some regular winter flu as both types start circulating when cold weather hits - but that it might hang around long enough in places like China or Indonesia to mate with an extremely lethal bird flu that sometimes jumps from poultry to people.
“Whoa, let’s hope not,” said Webster, who just became an adviser to the Obama administration’s flu team. “But we can’t rule it out.”
World health authorities are closely watching the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season just began, to see how dangerous the new swine flu proves. U.S. authorities estimate that a million people here have become ill since spring, with more than 200 deaths. While most patients recover easily, young people seem particularly vulnerable. And a related study released Monday by the journal Nature warns that the swine flu spreads through the entire respiratory system, especially the lungs, more easily than its seasonal counterparts.
Amid the uncertainty, the U.S. government is racing to begin a mass vaccination campaign in mid-October, targeting school-age children first. But the World Health Organization warned Monday that the novel virus is proving more difficult to grow into vaccine than anticipated, potentially delaying those efforts.
Scientists have long tracked influenza by its changeable coating, proteins on its surface - the “H” and “N” that provide its family name - that trigger the immune system to mount an attack.
Smith’s team provides a more in-depth look at the evolution of all eight gene segments that make up influenza viruses. That offers virologists more clues to understand what changes are most important on the path to virulence, potential red flags that they can monitor with the novel swine flu.
“It’s a very exciting paper because it tells us we may be able to predict how things are going to go in the future,” said Dr. Shanta Zimmer of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who recently co-authored a similar historical look at swine flu evolution. “We should try to understand more about what makes influenza severe or not severe.”
Another surprise: When history books tell us that the 1918 pandemic started out mild and returned with a bang, maybe the reason is two separate viruses. Smith’s study found evidence that a milder sister strain of H1N1 circulated at the same time.
“This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains and the adaptation to humans could be much more involved than what was previously thought,” said Dr. Raul Rabadan of Columbia University.
Just a note on this...
CHERIE Blair has caught suspected swine flu, The Sun can reveal. The former PM’s wife has been forced to cancel a string of public engagements as she battles the flu.
The date on that article, as far as I can tell is Thursday, July 16, 2009.
I just wanted to date it, that’s all...
There was a recent article where the parents found out from the media their child had died of the Swine Flu. What are your thoughts ???
July 15 2009 :
http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/50899722.html
I read the article and there is missing information here. I would want to find out the time span from the time that the lab test was done and the results returned, to when the media contacted them, and then, how the parents were in contact with the doctor in the meantime.
I’ve dealt with hospitals and nurses and other technicians and the doctors with relatives, and I know that if you miss the doctor on rounds, you’re not going to get what the doctor has to say to you from nurses and/or technicians. That won’t happen.
So, I would want to find out if the parents had communicated with the doctor after the diagnosis was made and after the doctor had received those results. And then I would want to know the time span involved, and then if the girl died, I believe the death certificate would be public information and I would guess the press would be getting that information because they would be *looking for* that kind of information, while the parents are talking with the doctor and finding out from him what is going on (and not searching death certificates).
If the doctor failed to inform the parents after receiving the results of the tests, then that’s a big problem. But, as I said, there is much missing information here, about the particulars...
Archiving Star Traveler’s important post:
The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
May 21, 2009, 00:20
(WMR) — The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part “X-Files” and part “Jurassic Park.”
After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997.
Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese 30-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission’s (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.
Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman’s corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie “Jurassic Park,” in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S. government-funded laboratory. The woman’s organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, where the virus’s genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.
The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein’s “Igor,” set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle.
WMR has learned from a research scientist who has been working on the recreation of the 1918 flu that the genetic material has been re-engineered to synthetically create what is now known as the A/H1N1 virus, or as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it, the “novel flu.”
The A/H1N1 influenza, which contains genetic material from two strains of swine flu, two strains of human flu, and a single strain of avian flu, has, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), infected, as of May 13, a total of 4,880 people in North America: 2,059 in Mexico; 2,535 in the United States, and 286 in Canada. There have been 56 reported deaths from the flu in Mexico, three in the United States, and one in Canada.
WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current “novel” flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus’s polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.
What is different about A/H1N1 is that, unlike other new strains of viruses that rapidly mutate upon emerging and then slow down mutation and then stop entirely, the “novel” or incorrectly-named “swine flu” is showing no signs yet of slowing down its mutation rate and that, according to scientists who worry about A/H1N1 being synthetically-generated, does not happen in nature.
In 2006, at a summit meeting in Cancun, Mexico, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed for their nations to coordinate their response to avian flu, which was spreading in Asia. National Public Radio, on April 2, 2006, ran a segment on how bird flu wreaked havoc in 1918 in Brevig Mission. NPR’s Weekend Edition ran a report from Brevig Mission by Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Radio: “The grave has been opened twice by the same pathologist. In 1951, Johann Hultin convinced village elders to allow him to take tissue samples from bodies buried in permafrost. His lab attempts to map the virus were unsuccessful, but he returned in 1997, and when he did, he was once again given permission to re-open the grave.”
WMR has learned from a journalist from Anchorage who covered the 1997 grave exhumation that there was CIA personnel with the team of scientists. Inuit elders of Brevig Mission argued that digging up the graves of the flu victims would release evil spirits. However, money allegedly changed hands between the U.S. government research team and some of the elders, so permission to dig up the graves was granted.
NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim’s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. Or was it? If what was extracted from the dead woman’s body in Brevig Mission was used to synthetically create the current A/H1N1 virus, there is a strain of avian flu in the virus. But the current A/H1N1 virus also contains swine and human flu strains.
What has been relayed by the researcher is that the original 1918 virus was the H1N1 virus. In Bio-safety level 3 (BSL-s) laboratory work that was largely classified, the virus was artificially combined with common H3N2 and a minor gene splice from the H5N1 Eurasian avian flu strain.
The avian flu or H5N1 virus that struck Asia in 2006 contained some genetic mutations of the 1918 virus. And scientists researching pandemic flu strains have, since the recreation of the 1918 flu, been playing fast and loose with flu samples. On April 17, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Meridian Bioscience, which was under contract to the College of American Pathologists, accidentally distributed the pandemic H2N2/Japan flu strain, as part of a flu testing kit, to influenza laboratories around the world. WHO ordered the labs to immediately destroy the flu sample because it was worried about an accidental release of the pandemic virus, resulting in a global health crisis. In 1957, H2N2 killed a million people around the world.
The Post’s article, by Wendy Orent, states that scientists were working to create an artificial strain of the 1918 virus: “[Scientists] can combine some 1918 genes either with laboratory strains that have been adapted to grow in mice, which don’t normally catch human flu, or with ordinary human flu strains to yield new artificial strains. Then the researcher infects mice with his new strain. Strains using three of the 1918 genes are already known to kill mice.”
The same Post article quotes Peter B. Jahrling, the chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the danger of the virus recreation research. Jahrling stated the research was like ”looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.” The article continues: “What concerns Jahrling and Brown, among others, is that experiments involving 1918 genes are not being carried out under the highest biosafety level, BSL-4. While most of the scientists use what is known as BSL-3 plus, or enhanced, conditions, they do not use space suits, chemical showers or gas-tight cabinets in their work.”
Lastly, the article has a stark warning regarding the 1918 flu reconstruction at the military laboratory in Rockville, research led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The article states: “Even more disturbing is what may happen when Taubenberger publishes the remaining three gene sequences. Then the entire 1918 flu could be built from scratch by anyone, anywhere, who has sufficient resources and skill. It is quite conceivable that resurrected 1918 flu could someday be used as a bioterrorist agent.”
In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled “Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?,” it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: “In October, a team of scientists, [CDC’s Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code — essentially the scenario played out in the movie ‘‘Jurassic Park,’’ albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists’ self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today’s population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?”
The article details how the 1918 genetic material was extracted and who worked on the project: “The resurrection of the 1918 influenza virus was a team effort engaging the resources of the C.D.C. in Atlanta, an obscure military pathology lab outside Washington, D.C., an esteemed group of influenza experts at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one elderly Swede. Though the story has been told before, it is impossible not to begin with the Swede. In 1950, Johan Hultin, then a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa, was searching for a Ph.D. topic when he heard a visiting virologist say that the only way to solve the mystery of the 1918 pandemic would be to recover the virus from a victim who had been buried in permafrost.”
There has been yet another secretive U.S. government group involved in researching bio-warfare agents like influenza. Known simply as JASON, the group consists of civilian scientists, the top experts in their fields and a number of Nobel laureates, who meet periodically and issue reports, many of which are classified. JASON has been in existence for 40 years and is thought to be a follow-on to the Manhattan Project, the top secret scientific group that created the atomic bomb during World War II. In fact, some of JASON’s earliest members helped to design both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Its first three members were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project.
Operating under the aegis of the MITRE Corporation, a federally-funded contracting entity, JASON scientists primarily met in the highly-secured Building 29 at 3550 General Atomics Court in San Diego. The location is the address of the Torrey Pines Institute. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), JASON also has links, according to distribution lists on JASON reports, to the CIA. The CIA maintains an element called the IC [Intelligence Community] JASON Program under the Chief Technical Officer. Traditionally, JASON self-selects its members from a number of academic disciplines. However, JASON almost lost its funding a few years ago, when, after issuing a report critical of the Bush administration’s ballistic missile defense program, DARPA attempted to force three new members, obviously political overseers, on to the JASON membership rolls. DARPA’s chief, Tony Tether, pulled funding for JASON, forcing the group for the first time since its inception in 1959 to look for another Pentagon sponsor. The ballistic missile defense program, also called Star Wars II, was a personal pet project of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
JASON survived when DARPA’s parent orgzniation, the Pentagon’s Directorate for Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), provided JASON with direct funding, an indication of the power enjoyed by the secretive JASON organization. JASON also has other federal government sponsors, including the Department of Energy.
JASON is also very much involved in issues of biological warfare. JASON produced a report on Civilian Biodefense in January 2000, which was highly redacted when released. Even the names of the report’s authors and the information on four bio-warfare scenarios is completely blacked out, except for a discussion of a 1947 smallpox incident in Scenario Two. The report also states that the CIA’s Clandestine Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Operations Center and Counter-Proliferation Center were interested in biological weapons intelligence collection and signatures. A section of the report on “Managing Civilian Response” to a bio-war attack is also completely redacted, as is a section on domestic intelligence. A page on the anthrax threat references “psychological BW [biological weapons] warfare.” The JASON report was completed almost two years before anthrax attacks all but suspended the work of Congress after 9/11 and saw the quick passage of the USAPATRIOT Act.
The JASON report also discusses the mining of medical data, including patient billing records, to find out if a disease outbreak has occurred and how far and what direction it is spreading by examining “spatiotemporal patterns,” including “averaging statistics for humans traveling globally.”
In fact, the JASON Civilian Biodefense report mirrors, in many respects, the analysis being currently conducted by medical intelligence (MEDINT) agencies around the world on the outbreak and spread of A/H1N1. And that begs the question: is A/H1N1, artificially-developed by U.S. government scientists, the real thing or a test run for something much worse?
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4724.shtml
60 posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:09:18 AM by Star Traveler
It is interesting that like the flu of 1918, it is striking down healthy young people.
From a post I did here...
Flu Pandemic Is Declared — First Time in 41 Years
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2293200/posts?page=105#105
—
1918 Flu Pandemic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
Mortality
The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but it is estimated that 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means that 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[11] Influenza may have killed as many as 25 million in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50 million people[4] while current estimates say 50 million to 100 million people worldwide were killed.[12] This pandemic has been described as “the greatest medical holocaust in history” and may have killed more people than the Black Death.[13]
—
The original reference is here (reference #13 above)...
The influenza pandemic of 1918–20 is one of the most dramatic events of medical history: statements include, ‘the greatest medical holocaust in history’ (Waring 1971); ‘the pandemic ranks with the plague of Justinian and the Black Death as one of the three most destructive human epidemics’ and ‘deaths in the hospital exceeded 25% per night during the peak’ (Starr 1976).
Journal of Applied Microbiology
Volume 91, Issue 4, Pages 572-579
Published Online: 7 Jul 2008
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/120718156/HTMLSTART
—
Also, the closing paragraph of this Journal article...
The interval of time between pandemics varies from a decade (1889–1900 and 1957–68) to some 50 years (1729/33–1781/2); the interval has not significantly increased or decreased with the passage of time, suggesting that increased population and travel are not determining factors. The interval between pandemics in the period from 1700 to 1889 is approximately 50–60 years and for the period since 1889 is 10–40 years; the interval may therefore be shortening. If more recent experience is to be a guide, the next pandemic will be within 40 years of the last, and will occur before 2008 counting from the 1968 pandemic, or 2017 if the pandemic of 1977 is accepted. This latter pandemic is unusual in many respects (Potter 1998), and its inclusion in the natural history of pandemics is debatable. It is unrewarding to attempt to seek a pattern for pandemics which will allow predictions; but it is self evident from the history of pandemics that each year that passes brings the next pandemic one year closer.
Ummm..., I’ve got to post this comment from the Admin Moderator here, just for “information purposes” if nothing else... take it as you will...
Please do not post content from Online Journal - check out the overall site - it is pure liberal nutbattery.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2294065/posts?page=18#18
Further information from Admin Moderator...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2294065/posts?page=23#23
Here are some examples of their ‘journalism’:
Cheney’s assassination squad run out of Pentagon; allegedly targeted Benazir Bhutto
The Christian Mafia, Ensign, and Coburn
Then some Americans wonder why they hate us
Ahmadinejad won, indeed, despite the likely interference of the US
Are the Iranian election protests another US orchestrated ‘color revolution’?
Private insurance is bad for your health
The real reason we don’t have single-payer, universal health care
Part 45: How the U.S. engineered the Iraqi holocaust
Seems that this website puts into question the veracity of the information supplied above...
Thanks. I didn’t know...
(Making a note for future reference.)
Well..., unfortunately neither did I. But, now we know about that website.
Archived:
Health Care Bill Will Fund State Vaccine Teams to Conduct ‘Interventions’ in Private Homes (for our own good, doncha’ know)
CNSNews.com ^ | July 16, 2009 | Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2293783/posts
-
Britain could face up to 65,000 swine flu deaths
TimesOnline (UK) ^ | Thursday, July 16, 2009 | Sam Lister
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2294065/posts
-
6,000 could die with swine flu: Roxon
Australian Broadcasting Corporation ^ | July 16, 2009 | Emma Rodgers
A “worst case scenario” could see around 6,000 people die from swine flu across the country this season, Health Minister Nicola Roxon says.
Over 10,000 Australians have contracted the virus, 22 have died and almost 60 are in intensive care.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2293758/posts
-
Ignore the Healthcare Professionals, you won’t die of Swine Flu [Danial Hannan MEP]
Telegraph UK ^ | 16th July | Daniel Hannan MEP
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2293765/posts
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